


old friends of the stars

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Series: ryan ross wrote some songs [2]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Gen, Lovers to Friends, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:19:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation about a past relationship, because moving on doesn't mean forgetting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	old friends of the stars

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place directly after "Let's begin at the beginning (we're lovers and we're losers)" and takes its title from the same Frank Turner song.
> 
> disclaimer: asserts nothing about the actual people attached to these names!

“Something you need to tell me?” Sarah asks from across the kitchen island, one hand on her wine glass, the other tapping, off-tempo, against the counter’s surface. She looks half-amused, and it is late, and it has been an emotional couple of hours, and Brendon is not in the mood to beat around the bush.

“Ross is kind of an ex,” he admits, sighing and sinking down onto one of the stools around the counter, across from her. “Long time ago. We fell apart a long time before the band did, it wasn’t a big thing.”

“No, really?” She asks, and the teasing is definitely there, but it’s gentle.

“That obvious?” he asks. He wouldn’t have thought it would be—he’s pretty tactile with all of his friends, and he didn’t think there was anything that screamed _I’ve seen him naked_ about that goodbye hug.

“Not really,” she allows, “But I wondered. You were a little weird about the guy he’d been seeing. Not jealous, or anything. Just a little off.”

That makes sense, Brendon had felt the awkwardness building in the air, then, he just hadn’t known what to do about it, and he’s not the most perceptive guy in the world, if he was aware of it _as it was happening_ , he knows it must have been pretty bad.

“Yeah,” he sighs, resting an elbow on the counter and leaning his head into his hand, fingers tugging at his hair. “When he and I had our thing, I was kind of young.” Brendon remembers feeling ancient at the time, world-weary and aching with understanding that he’d been sure Ryan, with his determined rejection of _how the world works_ instead of how he could make things work through sheer force of will, had been too naïve to understand. He’d been young, though, it’s been long enough that he can see that now.

“I was pretty young and I was a little fucked up about the _guys_ thing, you know? And it seemed like he’d somehow managed not to be?” Brendon laughs, short and sharp, because he’s still not sure how that one went down. “Little Ryan Ross, he was fucked up about pretty much every other thing in the entire fucking world, but this one thing where I was having issues, and he just takes it in stride.”

Sarah reaches a hand across the table, touches his elbow, and her eyes are so serious he has to look down, but it’s good, it’s right. She knows almost every other part of him by now, it’s only right that she hear this one, too. 

No need to get into the gory details, though. Done is done, so he tells her, “So there were times where I wasn’t great—about that, there were times where we had problems because of my shit, and then there were times when we had problems about every- _fucking_ -thing else, so it’s not like it stood out too much at the time. But then it was over. And there weren’t really—Ryan had girlfriends after that, there weren’t really any guys, and I wondered. If maybe I’d taken the one way where he’d managed to be totally _normal_ , and shit, one of the ways that he wasn’t fucked up, and I messed with that.”

He chances a glance up at Sarah, who is still looking on at him steadily, who hasn’t flinched back or said a word about any of it, and _at least_ he thinks _it’s a change from every other night this week, worrying about Spencer._

Next week, Brendon resolves, it can be Sarah’s turn to have the emotional revelations. For now, he stretches his face into a smile and tells her, “So it was good to hear that he had his thing with his guy.”

“Because you were afraid you broke him,” she offers, something wry under her tone, and when she puts it like that, it sounds really arrogant.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he tells her, and she nods.

“But it’s what you said,” she says, and she says it like she’s offering a totally neutral fact, not making any kind of point at all, until she smiles and tells him, “I’m not arguing. Isn’t that what the wedding was saying? That you ruined _me_ , at least, for everyone else?”

Brendon likes that grin, likes the way she waggles the finger with her ring on it so it glints in the light, really likes the way this conversation is turning in an entirely different direction. “Oh yeah?” he asks her. “Let’s prove it.”


End file.
